Always and Forever
by LadyDivine91
Summary: After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt disconnects, and Sebastian cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. (Read the rest of the summary in the first chapter) Kurtbastian Kurt H. Sebastian S.
1. Chapter 1

**After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?**

 **I wrote this story two years ago, using the Klaine advent drabble prompts as my guide. I finished it, but never published it. It was supposed to be my KHBB fic for this year, but I withdrew. I'll either post regularly, or just throw the whole thing up and be done with it. I haven't decided. It's super angsty, so I'm warning you ahead of time. It's 24 chapters total.**

 **Warning for the story overall for angst, mention of death of a child, mention of infidelity, minor self-harm, and sexual content. Also includes mention of Blaine Anderson and Hunter Clarington, but in no relation to Kurt and Sebastian.**

 **Inspired by the Klaine advent drabble prompt "ache".**

"God, that traffic was insane, wasn't it?" Sebastian complains, pulling off the highway and on to the less congested main road that leads to the heart of Manhasset.

"Mm-hmm," Kurt mutters in agreement, his head glued to the glass of the passenger seat window. Honestly, he barely even noticed the traffic, his eyes pointed skyward, watching the clouds pass by, the trees streaking overhead, the birds flitting off to warmer climes, flying far, far away.

Away from here, the way Kurt wishes _he_ could.

"I called ahead to turn the gas on, and the electricity," Sebastian mentions. He's been rambling for the whole hour and forty-five minute drive about nothing in particular, filling the tense air of the SUV with non-stop verbal static. "We're gonna want to air the place out for a few hours. The realtor told me it smells like mildew, but don't worry. There isn't any actual mildew in the house. Though, to tell you the truth, the man struck me as kind of insane. I mean, you should have seen him, Kurt! He was wearing a green paisley tie and brown loafers with a grey suit. Jesus Christ!" He laughs a nervous laugh. "I didn't say anything, but it would have been nice if you were there to subtly give him some pointers. Or not so subtly. You know how much I _love_ seeing you in action. Anyway, I'm thinking of having a second independent appraiser …"

"Are we there yet?" Kurt interrupts, focused more on how the changing leaves of the trees mute the skyline than on a single word coming out of his husband's mouth. Not that he could catch a one the way they're sprinting off his tongue like lemmings off a cliff. But the trees are soothing. They aren't like this in the city, lined up in rows, displaying their fall colors, blending one into the other like an ever-changing river - red tree, yellow tree, brown tree, gold tree … Their daughter Grace would call out the colors on their long car rides Upstate. He can hear the names roll through his head in her singsong voice, trying to make rhymes where there were none.

Green tree … lean tree!

Kurt smiles. He almost laughs.

"Just … uh … just a few more blocks," Sebastian replies, his attempt at chitchat cut short by his husband's impatient tone. Kurt, with his infinitely expressive voice, only uses three tones nowadays – angry, impatient, and indifferent. Sebastian hasn't learned how to avoid any of them, but he hates Kurt's indifferent tone the most by far. "Not too far."

"Good," Kurt says. "Because I'm tired of sitting in this stupid seat."

That's what Kurt said, but what he means is, "I'm tired of being locked in here with you," and Sebastian knows it.

Sebastian turns down two streets that spiral together until Kurt and Sebastian are completely locked in to this neighborhood where they're now living - Colony Lane – the same way Kurt is locked in to this decision to move here.

"And … here it is." Sebastian pulls up to the curb before it turns into a cul-de-sac.

Kurt sits up straight slowly to accommodate his stiff spine and ass. He looks around, sighing in frustration. "Here _what_ is? There are five house on this block. Which one is it?"

"Guess." When Kurt sighs again, Sebastian says, "I'll give you a hint – it's one of these three," and gestures to the houses on Kurt's right.

Kurt rolls his eyes and looks at the three houses closest. All three of them appear relatively identical – the same three-floor townhouse with a pointed roof and a square porch, reminiscent of a gingerbread house. They probably all had basements – a huge selling point for houses in this vicinity. But they don't call them basements Upstate. They call them "cellars". Somehow, the word "cellar" is more refined, and therefore more acceptable than just having a dull, old, run-of-the-mill, cold and drafty basement.

Need to build that wine _cellar_ so that we can have the most expensive cabernet on the market on hand in case we need to break it open and judge Sally Jones's newest highlight fiasco.

"She should have gone with lowlights, Sharon. (sip) Haven't I been saying that, Kayla? (sip) Haven't I been saying that she should have stuck with lowlights? But only around her face. (sip) Ha-ha-ha-ha! Please, pass the brie."

Kurt spent a good portion of his life in a basement bedroom, so he's not above the word. But he can still remember a time back in high school when he thought that _that_ was the person he was going to grow up to be. He'd start out as one of the New York elite, then become an Upstate snob. When the kids (two of them – a boy and a girl) were grown and gone, he'd start an artists' colony and retire to a lighthouse, isolate himself in obscurity while being ironically jaded at the world.

Well, he was nearing forty, and he _was_ jaded, but for entirely different reasons.

The house at the curve in the cul-de-sac is painted a sea green shade that Kurt isn't too thrilled with. That could be remedied with a bucket of paint and some elbow grease. But from its position, it probably gets the bulk of the high-noon sun. There goes his electric bill in the summer (which Kurt knows Sebastian doesn't care about, but just because they have money to spend doesn't mean that Kurt ever stopped being frugal), and there goes his fair skin, which will freckle endlessly while he sits at the kitchen table.

No thank you.

The one beside it is in a better position, slanted away from direct sunlight, but it's painted a slate blue that comes across as a bit too harsh considering the neighborhood's neutral color scheme. Sebastian should know better than to see that house and say, "Yes. That's it. That's the one," unless the inside looks like the Palace of Versailles.

The last house is also blue, but this blue borders on pale grey, almost exactly the same shade as his father's house in Lima. There's a maple tree growing though the pavement in front of it, shading it, and shedding its red and gold leaves all over the front porch. And on the porch, there hangs a swing, like the one he and Sebastian used to talk about having on the porch of the house they wanted to someday retire to. Kurt used to picture himself sitting on their swing in the early mornings, sipping a mug of coffee while watching the sun light the sky.

Sebastian always talked about having sex on it and scaring the neighbors.

Kurt breathes a long sigh.

"It's this one," he guesses finally. "The one with the porch swing. Isn't it?"

"Well, don't sound _too_ excited," Sebastian jokes, but he's wary, afraid of what the fallout may be if Kurt doesn't like it. The staircase Sebastian has been climbing to make his husband happy is tenuous. One misstep can have him plummeting back to the bottom, with no certainty that Kurt will let him try to climb up again. It's his own damn fault, Sebastian reminds himself as he gets out of the vehicle. He did this to them, so he'll let Kurt lash out. He'll let Kurt bare his teeth and his claws, let him dig in with both hands.

He deserves it.

Sebastian leads Kurt up the walkway, past the tree and the swing, and through the front door. The house is different in feel and configuration to the penthouse they've been living in since college – a little cramped around the corners, a lot more shadows, a lot less noise, and no artificial light. But Sebastian likes that better. He's an Ohio native, the same as Kurt. But unlike Kurt, he considers himself a country boy at heart. He could have bought Kurt any house he wanted, but when a contact told him that the owner of this house – a house that Sebastian had had has his eye on for a while – was finally selling this quaint parcel of equity, it seemed too perfect, especially considering the timing, and Sebastian bent over backwards to rescue it from escrow.

Kurt hadn't wanted to leave the city, but it was full of too many memories, too many friends and acquaintances who had yet to hear the news, and those who constantly offered their condolences. Few people greeted him without their faces immediately dropping into a sorrowful frown and the words, "I'm so sorry," coming out of their mouths. It made his head, his heart, and his soul ache.

Kurt loved New York City, but there was nothing left for him there - nothing but the constant hollow thud he felt whenever he saw something that reminded him of their angel Grace. School would be starting soon. All of her friends would be moving on to the fifth grade. But his daughter – life ended for her, far too soon.

"Here." Sebastian reaches for Kurt's hand, but Kurt reflexively pulls his hand away. Sebastian watches Kurt slip his hands into his pockets to cover for his flinching from Sebastian's touch. Sebastian, should be used to it by now, but he isn't. "Uh … let me show you why I think you're going to love this house."

Sebastian jogs up the stairs to the next level. Kurt follows a few steps behind, not walking too close. He sees three doors immediately when he reaches the top. They pass the first two without mention, and Sebastian opens the last.

"Here." He walks in, crosses to the opposite side, and throws open one of two windows, filling the musty space with the crisp bite of autumn air. "This room can be your new studio."

"What are the other two rooms?" Kurt asks offhandedly. This room is perfect, of course. His husband knows him too well. Even at dusk, it's flooded with natural light, and looks out over the rooftops of the other houses, giving him a view of the surrounding forests and orchards, stretching way past the highway. With a little TLC, it could look just like his studio back in their penthouse in the city.

And Kurt knows what the other two rooms are. There's only two rooms they can be.

"A bathroom and the master bedroom," Sebastian answers, watching his husband as he strolls across the floor.

"So, this would have been …"

"This used to be … uh … another bedroom …"

It would have been _Grace's_ bedroom if she were still with them, Kurt knows, subtly trying to get his husband to acknowledge the fact. Cruelly so. But if she were still with them, Sebastian wouldn't have cheated, their marriage wouldn't be falling apart, and they wouldn't be trying to run away from their problems.

"Yeah, well, I guess I could put a foldout bed in here," Kurt mumbles as he estimates the space.

"I guess you can if that's what you really want," Sebastian agrees with a sigh. "Or you're just saying that to hurt me, which, if you are, you'll be happy to know, it's working."

Kurt rolls his eyes. "I'm not saying that to hurt you," he eloquently lies. "I'm being practical. I'm not going to have easy access to the _Vogue_ workshop if I live two hours away. If I expect to get a new line going again, I'm going to have to pull long hours."

Sebastian looks at his husband, who's doing his best to avoid looking at him, curiously. "You're … thinking of starting a new line? You didn't mention that."

Kurt shrugs. "Did I have to?"

"No. I mean, I just wasn't sure that you would go back to designing after … you know …" Sebastian means after the death of their daughter. Kurt practically spent every spare second he wasn't designing for work designing with her.

"Well, you're considering going back to working in the city after …" Kurt means after Sebastian cheated. One of the reasons Kurt agreed to move out of the city was to keep Sebastian away from the man he was convinced would become too big a temptation for Sebastian to resist the next time they got into any kind of argument, not matter how small. Granted, it took their daughter dying to get him to cheat, but Kurt figures it'll keep getting easier from now on. "Anyway, I won't want to wake you by crawling into bed at four in the morning, not when you have to be at work at six," Kurt finishes when he's let that dig soak in long enough.

"I'm not going back to work for a while, remember? That's what a leave of absence is. And even if I was, why would I mind you waking me?" Sebastian grins. "In fact, I was thinking that it might be nice to get back to what we _used_ to do in the morning before work."

"This isn't all about you," Kurt reminds him, raising his eyes to the ceiling.

"I know, I know," Sebastian says softly. He waits for Kurt to look at him again. Kurt hasn't been able to look at him, _really_ look at him, since he came home in a taxi, wrinkled and hungover, the morning after. Grace passed away six months ago, which means he's been waiting for a while. He's still waiting. "So…" He rubs his cold hands together, wishing he could stick them underneath his husband's thick, button-down sweater, press his ice-cold palms against Kurt's hot skin. A year ago, Kurt would have squealed and laughed and complained, "Bas! Your hands are _freezing_!" But he would have wrapped his arms around himself and held on tighter, would have let Sebastian lean in for a kiss, would have fallen for the line, "Now that my hands are warm, maybe you can help me warm up a few other things."

Then they'd have made love on the wood floor with the door still open.

He could do that, if only to make Kurt laugh the way he used to.

Then maybe Kurt would love him again.

But looking at his husband's expression, dreary as the grey sweater he held closed with one hand at the neck, Sebastian knows that now is not the time.

"Is this what you need to make you happy again?" he asks hopefully. If only it could be that easy. If only a house, or a car, or a vacation could turn back the clock and erase everything that happened.

Erase everything that Sebastian did, and bring their daughter back.

Kurt circles the room, step by step on the roughly finished wood floor, which brings a new detail to his eye – a torn corner of wallpaper above the open window that clearly showed a single, scripted word underneath: _darling_.

Kurt examines it from a distance, trying not to pay too much obvious attention to it in case Sebastian was behind it. He can't be too sure. It doesn't _look_ like it was written recently. But leave it to Sebastian to try to woo his husband back with something syrupy like that. Something cloy and romantic.

Something he thinks Kurt will fall for.

"No," Kurt answers honestly, glancing again at the fading wallpaper; the scuffed floors; the peeling ceiling; briefly scanning his husband's face till his gaze settles on the dust-streaked windows. He stares outside at the sky, at the clouds, at the trees, at the birds flying away, wild and free. He's never going to be able to fly away like that, so he might as well accept the cage that he's in. "But it's a start."


	2. Chapter 2

**Inspired by the Klaine advent drabble prompt "balance".**

The first evening in their new house becomes a long, exhaustive dance of unpacking cleaning in preparation for the movers to arrive in the morning. What, in the past, would have been an upbeat tango of flirting in the hallways while dragging in suitcases, punctuated by the occasional stop, dip, and smooch, is a formal, boxy waltz, with Sebastian giving Kurt a wide-berth whenever he hears his husband coming, and Kurt pausing in doorways, eyes cast down, when Sebastian passes by.

The rush to clear the dirt away and make things suitable for the moderate amount of furniture they chose to bring with them affords Kurt ample opportunities to send Sebastian on a host of errands, ensuring him stretches of time that he can spend alone to reflect and think.

Consider the past and plan for the future.

They had decided not to bring everything from the penthouse with them Upstate. They weren't selling the place. Keeping it furnished for the odd trip back seemed like the practical thing to do, so they only packed those few things that they absolutely couldn't live without; personal items that couldn't be replaced.

Except for the furniture from Grace's room. _That_ Kurt donated to the Salvation Army, with the exception of one lamp – a Winnie the Pooh lamp that Kurt had found in mint condition, ironically, at the Salvation Army, on the day that he and Sebastian found out that their surrogate was pregnant. It's ceramic, hand painted, with Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh as the base, sitting back to back with one another, each of them holding a handful of balloons. One oversized red balloon contains the bulb, the colored plastic lending a faint, rosy tint to the lamp's glow. Along the bottom edge is written the words, "If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever."

Kurt's mother had read him _Winnie the Pooh_ books his entire childhood. He could recite most of A. A. Milne's writings by the time he turned eight … the year his mother passed away.

He read those same books to his daughter.

She'd almost had them memorized, too.

Seven hours of scrubbing, sanitizing, and, for Sebastian, racing around town, wipe the two them out to the point where falling asleep is simply a matter of inflating an air mattress and putting heads down on pillows. They had picked one up, a Queen size one, at a JCPenney's along the way. It's nowhere near as luxurious as the custom-made, King size bed currently stuck in the back of an Allied Moving Truck, waiting to take a journey on the 495. This mattress is a tighter fit than they're used to. It doesn't help that the thing sinks in the middle whenever one of them rolls over. With the both of them measuring six-foot-plus tall, they have to lie in the fetal position to fit comfortably, which should require them to spoon, but Kurt finds a way to keep himself out of his husband's arms.

The material the mattress is made out of seems perpetually ice cold, not warming up a touch with their combined body heat, which Kurt didn't anticipate. Even with the gas and electricity switched on, there's something wrong with the central heating. They don't have the requisite amount of blankets to keep from freezing, which adds to the misery. Despite being pissed at Sebastian, Kurt doesn't have the heart to send him out at one a.m. to the 24 hour WalMart, so he closes his eyes and resigns himself to suffering until dawn.

For the next five hours, Kurt's mind remains blank – darkness, nothing. No noise, no dreams, and no flashbacks, thank God. It's not entirely restful, but it's the best he could have hoped for. The last half a year hasn't been conducive to dreaming. The nightmares keep coming, one after the other, the next one worse than the last, shaking him to his core until he jars awake with a pain in his chest like someone had tried, in steel boots, to stomp him into the dirt. But waking up doesn't solve the problem. He doesn't know what he hates worse – waking up weeping in his husband's arms, or waking up weeping alone.

Kurt's feelings for Sebastian are complicated when he thinks they shouldn't be. Kurt should either love him and forgive him, or hate him and move on. But he loves him _and_ hates him. His hands itch to hold him, but a second later, he wants to shove him away. He wants to go, but he can't imagine leaving.

Kurt can't imagine living without him.

Regardless of that fact that should tie up all the loose ends, mend the hurts and cool the hate, it doesn't, because Kurt can't find a way to forgive him.

A well-meaning Facebook friend had told Kurt over Messenger that the problem was Kurt's pride had been hurt by Sebastian cheating. Push the pride aside and get over it. Ultimately, the marriage is more important.

Then he said something about Kurt putting on his "big boy" pants, mentioned God, and quoted the Bible.

A minute later, Kurt blocked him.

That's another blessing of moving away, leaving behind the "get over it already" crowd. He probably hates them more than the _forever sorry_ folks. The people who tell him to move on, to get over it, to put it behind him don't really care about him; they just want him to stop complaining, as if they're somehow obligated to follow him on social media, and that puts the burden on him, in turn, to make _them_ feel comfortable.

Maybe some of them _do_ care, but not enough to put themselves in his shoes and understand that it's just not that easy. Being on the outside of the swamp and looking in at a man who's drowning, yelling at him to grab a branch and pull himself free, is different than being that man stuck hip-deep in mud that feels like cement and losing a fight that's beyond his control.

And sometimes, as a matter of self-preservation, you simply give up.

Kurt doesn't know who Sebastian slept with. He has his suspicions, but he doesn't know for sure, and Sebastian won't confirm. He says it's because he wants to put it behind him, forget it ever happened, and that _infuriates_ Kurt. If sleeping with another man was something Sebastian would need to "put behind him", then why even do it? Or (and Kurt hates himself for thinking like this), if Sebastian didn't want Kurt to dwell on it, why not take steps to ensure that Kurt wouldn't find out? Sebastian, of all people, should have known that this would eat Kurt up inside. It's the kind of thing that he'd never let go. Yes, Kurt would be devastated if he discovered the cheating and the cover up years after the fact, but at least he'd be in a better place to mourn his marriage separate from having to mourn his daughter.

What Sebastian did was selfish on so many levels.

Kurt knows that sex isn't love, but he wonders – was there a moment in the middle of all of it, caught up in the kissing and the fucking, where it felt like love?

Kurt met Sebastian in high school. Kurt wasn't just a virgin back then. He created his own, brand new category of virgin for which he could have had a cape and costume made – _Captain_ _Super Prude_. Sex was a taboo topic for him, so much so that his high school's chastity club hated him. Apparently, he set the bar too high. As much as he wanted a special someone who would someday sweep him off his feet, gently usher him into losing his virginity by making soulful but passionate love to him, he preferred to not think about it too often or too in depth.

"The talk" between him and his father was a mortifying experience.

There were pamphlets involved. He still has some of them.

When it came to finding a boyfriend, Sebastian wasn't what Kurt had planned on at all. Where Kurt was attracted to debonair, old school gentlemanly types a few years older than himself, Sebastian was crass, rude, downright explicit, and a year younger. On top of that, he was (to coin a phrase stolen from one of Kurt's best friends, Quinn) _the biggest French whore of them all_. Sebastian didn't care for romance, and he didn't attach emotions to sex, but he definitely had a way of making other men fall in love with him.

Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe were the two people in the world least likely to fall in love with one another.

But according to Sebastian, he fell in love with Kurt _long_ before Kurt fell in love with him.

Sebastian claimed that Kurt was the first man he ever fell in love with - at first sight, no less.

He whispered those words in Kurt's ear the first time they made love.

He said those exact words during his toast at their wedding.

He wrote them in every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary card he ever gave to Kurt.

He said them over Grace's crib the night they brought her home.

 _("Look at this little thing, Kurt." Sebastian sighed, reaching out to gently stroke Grace's cheek. "Our daughter. Is it ridiculous that I've only known her for two days and I'm already in love with her?_

 _"Technically, nine months and two days," Kurt teased. "But, no. It's not ridiculous."_

 _"God, Kurt. I never thought I could fall so fast in love with another human being before I met you."_

 _"Really?" Kurt said, because he always did._

 _"A-ha," Sebastian replied, smiling when Grace yawned, her whole mouth moving in a complete circle before she settled down again. "I fell in love with you the second I laid eyes on you. And then … well … it was all over for me."_ )

Those words, the memory of that happiness, continually breaks Kurt's heart. Could it be possible that, after close to twenty years of marriage, after reciting those words so many times, that they didn't mean anything anymore? Had Sebastian found someone else that he could fall in love with?

Sebastian won't answer that question. He says it's insulting.

But maybe he can't because he knows that Kurt couldn't handle the answer.

Every time Kurt looks at his husband, he sees touches on his skin that don't belong to Kurt, kisses on his lips that Kurt didn't put there.

Kurt doesn't know how to make himself see past them.

So instead, he looks away.

The second Kurt feels sunlight on his face, he's up out of bed, grabbing his messenger bag and padding down the hall into his studio before Sebastian can stir.

The room looks different with rays of blurry morning sun coming through the windows. Kurt didn't put any black out curtains up, so the sheer curtains that came with the house let fingers of light poke through, bouncing off the wallpaper and brightening up the floor. The floor is a mess, the wood warped and worn, as if this room were a main thoroughfare and not a bedroom. The wood had been varnished at one time. Spots of resin dot the floor like oily puddles. The wood itself – some variety of walnut, Kurt suspects - has blackened to a morbid pitch with age. It sucks up the light and gives little back.

"Oh, yeah," Kurt murmurs, pressing around the brittle edge of one spot with his toe. "This floor has to be completely redone."

He's stuck on the idea that this room could have been his daughter's room if she were still alive. He and Sebastian had talked about raising Grace in a more suburban environment, but Kurt leaned heavily on the side of staying in the city. Some of his motives were selfish. He loved New York City. He loved Manhattan. It had been his lifelong dream to end up there. He wanted his daughter to grow up with all of the things he didn't have – culture, diversity, theaters and libraries and museums a train ride away. He didn't want her raised around the closed, narrow minds of a small town. He wanted her to be an independent thinker – liberated, rational, intelligent. But he also wanted her to be compassionate and kind. He wanted her to know the world, its wonders and its failings, the way it truly was, not the way it looked on a movie screen, and long to change it for the better. They participated in fundraisers, gathered donations for the homeless, and volunteered in soup kitchens.

Grace was a pure light, a driving force that, at her age, Kurt didn't get the chance to be.

So in honor of her, he wants his workroom to be bright and colorful - a mixture of his vintage aesthetic and her fun-loving personality. He'll paint the walls her favorite colors, put homages to her in the details, pick out the furnishings she would have preferred.

Since this will be the room he spends most of his time in, he wants it to be everything about his daughter that he adored.

He opens his bag and pulls out his phone, checking the time. 6:08. The movers are supposed to arrive between eight a.m. and ten, but movers, electricians, plumbers, and cable guys never arrive on time. He fishes out his sketchbook. He sits on the floor and gets to work jotting down a layout – where his drafting table will go, where he'll store his bolts, where he'll put his sewing machine, a spot for a work chair, marking places here and there for something personal like his mother's vanity, his first ever dress form, a few of his awards ...

… and photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.

He didn't keep photographs in his studio at _Vogue_. He had an obsession with keeping his private life private, which he doesn't apologize for. Since he met clients there, he liked to keep that space impersonal – nothing to get in the way of the job at hand. Unlike Sebastian, who had candid snapshots and some of the most Godawful photographs from their high school and college years stuffed into collage frames and hung on every single wall of his office, squeezing things like his degrees and his diplomas into far corners so that those pictures could be prominently displayed. He always said that people knew the Smythes by name and reputation. If anyone wanted to see his credentials, then they could Google them. But when people walked into his office, he wanted them to know that first and foremost, he was a family man.

Besides, Sebastian had always known, from childhood, that he would become a lawyer. He never dreamed that he would be a father … or a husband.

Those were the two accomplishments he seemed the proudest of.

Kurt regrets not having more pictures of Grace hanging on his studio walls, her smiling face to look at every hour of every day, watching his meetings and overseeing his every stitch. She was his good-luck charm, his soothing balm, his missing puzzle piece. She deserved a place of honor.

Now he'll give her one.

His stomach growls as he works. A smell from _somewhere_ tickles his nose and he groans. Just a few more seconds of sketching on the hard ground and he'll grab a bite to eat … maybe. With his ass becoming numb, he doesn't see a reason to get up, and bedsides, he's on a roll. The sharp sounds of car doors opening and closing, and constant banging echo in, and he winces, his head throbbing from lack of sleep. Dammit, if he could just get it to stop! It's hard enough to concentrate as it is. He hopes this is a one-time only thing. He'd hate to wake up to that cacophony every morning. If he ever decides to go outside and meet the neighbors, he'll have to find a polite way of asking them not to do whatever _that_ is before he has his morning coffee.

Of course, soundproofing is also a feasible option.

"Kurt? Kurt, are you …?"

Kurt shifts his legs underneath him. He lifts a hand to massage his shoulders. That mattress must have killed his back. His arms ache something fierce. Sitting on this floor doesn't help, the uneven boards digging in to his legs, but it's not an impetus for him to stop.

Just one more minute. One more minute of sketching out this room and then he'll join the world. One more minute to get his thoughts straight. One more minute to brush aside the things that like to torture him. Forget that his mother died when he was eight, his stepbrother when he was 18. That his father passed away three years ago, and his daughter six months ago.

Not too long after, his husband cheated.

Five. That was the number of things that he had loved in this world more than himself.

Those are the things that he'd lost.

They were the things he needed to forget in order to make it through till the evening.

He'll replace the insulation and the drywall, smother everything in a noiseproofing compound, then paint the walls in swirls of pink and gold. He'll do the ceiling in varying shades of blue, indigo, and violet, like the sky at night, and cover it in crystals to represent stars the way Grace had wanted to do with her bedroom. Kurt had promised her that, the second everything was over, when they could risk her being around the debris and the fumes, he would do that for her.

He had never broken a promise to Grace. He wasn't about to start.

He scribbles those notes in sloppy script in the margin of his paper, sniffles and wipes his tears with the back of his shaking hand. He tries to focus on specifics to bring himself back from the brink of a breakdown. He needs a good cry, but he doesn't want the comforting that will go with it if Sebastian hears him. He just can't right now. Many times, Sebastian comforting Kurt turns into Kurt comforting him back, and Kurt only has the strength to handle one outburst.

"Kurt? Did you want to …?"

Kurt waves a hand to shoo away the buzzing beside his ear, relieved when it doesn't take much more than that.

In order to paint the walls, he'll have to take the wallpaper down.

That immediately brings to mind the corner of torn paper over by the window, and the word written underneath.

 _Darling_.

That corner offends him. Kurt had entertained the idea that that word had nothing to do with Sebastian; that there was another layer of wallpaper underneath, probably festooned with line art of flowers, along with quotes from various love poems sprinkled throughout, circa 1800s. But then that would make that one tear and that one word an amazing coincidence, since _darling_ is the pet name that Sebastian has called Kurt since day one. When he started doing it, every time he said it, Kurt had an incredible urge to sock him on the jaw.

He was a pain in the ass, even back then.

Did Sebastian actually think Kurt would fall for writing _darling_ on the wall? After the things he said? After what he _did_?

Kurt's hand trembles so badly, he smudges the ink on his page. He stops writing. He takes a deep breath and counts to ten. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sun warming his face. It's gone now when it was there just a second ago, which is disconcerting, but he has to ignore that and calm down. He has to relax. He'd promised he'd give this marriage a chance; that he'd try to make this work. And Sebastian, so far, has held up his part of the bargain. He's given Kurt space. He's listened to him vent uncontested. He's let Kurt keep tabs on him – where he goes, when he'll be back, with photo texts in between to prove that he is where he said he would be. Kurt has to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Sebastian extends an olive branch, Kurt should take it.

But did he want to?

"I didn't hear you when you got up this morning."

Kurt sighs. "Well, you were dead to the world." Sebastian's voice starts Kurt's hand up again. He wants to look busy. He doesn't want to be caught in a position where he has to give his husband his full attention.

He hasn't forgotten everything yet.

"I'm just saying, see? You won't disturb me. You don't need to put a bed in here," he adds under his breath.

Kurt bobs his head back and forth, adding a place in his layout for a foldout out of spite. "We'll see. It's only been the one day."

"That's true," Sebastian says. It sounds like a challenge. A _tired_ challenge, like Sebastian knows he's already lost. "So, you like the room, huh?"

"Yeah. I think I do."

"And what about the rest of the house?"

He doesn't know why Sebastian sounds like he's _asking_. It's a done deal. They both agreed on getting a new house. Sebastian found one he thought Kurt would like and bought it. What? Are they going to back out now and magically move somewhere else?

Will moving around from house to house solve what's wrong between them?

"It's fine, I guess." Kurt shrugs. "I don't know. I think it's hard for me to visualize without taking the grand tour. I'll be able to tell better when I get started decorating."

"Are you gonna hire that guru guy to help you with the yin and yang stuff?" Sebastian jokes cautiously. "That Kung Fu guy … what's his name …" Sebastian snaps his fingers as if he's seriously trying to remember.

"He was a Feng shui practitioner, and his name was Carl."

"His name was _Carl_?" Sebastian laughs. "No no no, his name was not _Carl_. Carl is the name of a _dentist_. He's not a guy you call to Wang Chung your house."

" _Feng shui_ ," Kurt corrects again. "I hired him to help me create balance in our home." Kurt chuckles despite the fact that he doesn't want to find what Sebastian said funny. He doesn't want Sebastian to affect him. But he's right. The man's name irked Kurt, too, when Isabelle referred him. "Ridiculous name or not, he seemed like a knowledgeable guy."

"Well, do you think that shaolin stuff could work here?"

The levity of the moment becomes saturated by the pain hanging in the room, and Kurt coils further into his sketch.

"That remains to be seen. But I think I'm going to try doing it for myself this time. Of course, the overall effect is going to be completely thrown to heck when you hire whoever never to decorate your office." Kurt throws a derisive scowl over his shoulder. It misses its mark when Kurt won't look Sebastian in the eyes.

Sebastian swallows Kurt's scowl without thinking of a comeback. They've had that argument before when Kurt redecorated their penthouse. Kurt felt the need to redecorate whenever something big happened in their lives, but Sebastian's office was off limits, so _it_ stayed the same. Kurt tried to find one or two things to put into his design scheme that would bring a theme from Sebastian's office out so that the penthouse would blend, but whatever the thing he chose was – a print or a vase, an ottoman or a coffee table – it stuck out like a sore thumb, until Kurt tried less and less.

"Can't fight City Hall," he'd say, returning to the business of finishing the rest of the space.

Things changed around them, and yet, in Sebastian's carefully curated world, life stood still.

The last time Kurt redecorated was before Grace was born. Nothing in the penthouse matched Sebastian's office after that.

"I want _you_ to do it," he says decisively.

Kurt stops scribbling. "Me?"

"Yeah."

Kurt stares at the paper in front of him, the surface more ink than white. He almost looks back to see if Sebastian is serious. "Are you … are you sure? You always said that we need our separate spaces."

"That's only because you're a little heavy handed with the pastels."

It's the opportunity Kurt has been waiting for their entire marriage – to decorate Sebastian's office. Once upon a time, he saw it as the ultimate gesture of trust.

Back when he was naïve, and apparently fairly stupid.

"I trust you," Sebastian says. "Just don't go making it all shabby chic."

"Don't worry. I won't." Kurt debates standing up and giving Sebastian a hug, or a handshake. This seems like a time that would warrant it. But when he rolls an inch to his knees, his entire body screams with pain. God, he feels old. How can he be this stiff after just half an hour?

Kurt returns to his planning. Even though he doesn't feel prepared to leave his sanctuary, he affixes on that solid mask he's been wearing for weeks around Sebastian. Just one more minute. One more minute and he'll go downstairs. He thinks he says it out loud. He expects Sebastian to go back to their room and get ready for the day, but he stays in place like a statue, watching Kurt draw, huddled over his sketchbook with his back turned to him and the door.

Kurt waits to hear the sound of footsteps retreat the way they came, but they don't. Kurt's pencil stops above a square drawn in the corner meant to represent his stereo. He can't continue his drawing with his husband watching, so he bites the bullet.

"Was there something else you needed?" he asks.

"They've … uh … got the bed in," Sebastian says, "and the TV."

Kurt scrunches his nose. He lifts his head. What does he mean they've got…? The bed and the TV are on the moving truck. Kurt looks at his phone, resting on the floor by his knee.

"What are you talking about?" Kurt scoffs. "The movers haven't even arrived yet. It's only 7:15."

"That's right," Sebastian says, speaking slowly, the way he does when he's explaining something to Kurt that he thinks Kurt might explode over. He leans forward like he wants to come in, but doesn't without an invitation. "It's 7:15 in the evening."

Kurt snaps his head up, rolling his eyes as if Sebastian is crazy, ready to object. But with his gaze away from his page, he notices something different about the light in the room. Instead of a soft, diffused blue, it's become a thicker yellow. Shadows stretch across the floor that weren't there before. The room is warmer than he remembers, and the skin of his left shin, folded over his right, feels hot and irritated, like he might have gotten a sunburn.

"It's the evening?" Kurt asks, shaking his head. "How can it … but … why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you come get me?"

"I tried. I told you when the movers arrived. I asked you what you wanted for lunch. I brought you the portable heater, and put a lamp in here when it started to get dark so you'd have light."

Kurt looks around him. In the emptiness of the room, they're easy to see. There's a portable heater behind him, and in the corner of the room, to the left of the door, standing straight and tall like a structural support beam, is a brass lamp without a shade, filling the room with artificial light.

They're the first two pieces of furniture in his new studio, and _Sebastian_ put them there.

Kurt doesn't want them there. He'd rather be cold and alone in the dark.

"We don't have WiFi or cable yet, but I set up the Blu-ray player," Sebastian continues. "I thought I could go get some take-out, and we could have a picnic dinner on the bed. Maybe … watch a movie?"

Kurt does a 180 on his sore ass and looks at his husband, which is to say that he looks at a spot over Sebastian's head, with a mildly confused expression. He's not really thinking about the bed or the movie or dinner at all. Even though he was hungry earlier, apparently _hours_ earlier, he's not hungry now. He couldn't be _less_ hungry. His desire to eat simply went away. His appetite has been waning off and on for weeks. Sometimes he forgets to eat until Sebastian sticks a sandwich in his face.

Sebastian stuck a spear into the heart of what they had together, and now he's keeping Kurt alive to help him fix it.

"Kurt? Please?"

Here's the olive branch, Kurt thinks. He has to decide whether he's going to take it, or toss it aside.

He promised Sebastian he'd try, and Kurt has never broken a promise to Sebastian.

He's not going to start tonight.

"Alright. I'm coming," Kurt says, closing his sketchbook. He tries to unfold his legs, but his knees lock up on him, and he rushes to massage the beginnings of a cramp. Sebastian looks like he's about to spring in and help, but Kurt puts up a hand. "I'll just be a minute."

Sebastian nods and takes a step back. Even with that rejection, Sebastian looks happier, more hopeful. He takes his phone out of his pocket and leaves the room. The grateful smile on Sebastian's lips should fill Kurt with warmth. It used to.

But it doesn't.

That night, after a meal of Szechuan from a questionable establishment (not questionably _clean_ , just questionably _Chinese_ ), and _The Devil Wears Prada_ (a movie that Sebastian _swore_ up and down that he'd never watch again), Sebastian falls asleep with his head on Kurt's chest. And Kurt lets him, even if he himself barely gets a minute of peace.


	3. Chapter 3

**Inspired by the Klaine advent drabble prompt "clouds".**

Kurt looks out his studio window at the neighborhood down below. It's 10:15 and a Tuesday, so it isn't as if the place is teeming with activity. Everyone living on Colony Lane seems content to stick to their own boxes, abide by their own schedules, and go about their own lives, without much interference from the outside world.

Kurt hates to hand it to Sebastian, but that's what he wants as well. This brand of isolationism is exactly what he needs.

Another point for Sebastian. Damn. He seems to be racking them up lately, while Kurt …

… Kurt can admit that he's not trying as hard as he probably should be, but he's also giving himself permission to be selfish. There shouldn't be a timetable for bouncing back from loss. Kurt got the double-whammy. He has betrayal to get over, too. He knows that repairing his marriage should be a priority, but he also needs to do what's right for him.

He hasn't exactly figured out what that is yet, but he's working on it.

An underlying childhood guilty has him believing that he should introduce himself to the neighbors. That's considered etiquette, after all. It's what his mother would do. When Kurt was young, every time his family moved (and it had been a handful of times) Kurt's mother would bake a batch of cookies, put groups of them into colorful cellophane bags, tie the tops with curled ribbon, and take them door to door to say hello. She wouldn't wait for people to show up on their doorstep with a casserole and a smile. She believed in being pro-active. She would tell him, "New neighborhood, new life. Go out and be a part of it."

But Kurt doesn't want to, and the neighbors seem just fine with that. It's been three days, and Kurt and Sebastian have only gotten one visitor – the technician who came to fix the heating. Of course, the neighbors could be waiting for them to get settled. Then they'll pounce on over with perfectly iced Gingerbread Bundt cakes and Chicken Kievs, church invites and Girl Scout cookie order forms, like a swarm of Stepford Wives.

Kurt doesn't care about being pro-active, and besides, his mother isn't around anymore to scold him for behaving like a hermit.

That may be harsh, but it's true.

The clouds pulling together in the sky overhead, threatening rain, give Kurt an excuse to shut himself away and work on the house. With his laptop open on the floor in front of him, he browses those websites that feed his design fetishes – Ethan Allen, Neiman Marcus, Anthropologie – but he's not feeling in the least inspired. He'd decided to start small, take things room by room instead of visualizing everything at once. But he's stumped, staring at the page in front of him, unsure whether the chair he's been mulling over for the past half hour is gorgeous or gaudy.

He should really focus on getting the living room together since it's the room where they do the bulk of their entertaining … provided that they ever start entertaining again. Also, he should do something about the master bedroom, which, for the moment, houses a bed, a TV, and a dresser within the confines of four drab, ashy walls. Kurt has always felt that the bedrooms are the heart of the home. They're the individual sanctuaries where dreaming and planning and affirmation happen. He only has the one to worry about, so he should put extra effort into making it warm and comforting, with a touch of the sensual on the off chance he ever plans on touching his husband again.

The jury is still out on that one, unfortunately.

The kitchen, he's not looking forward to decorating. Aside from his studio, he and Grace spent much of their time together in the kitchen, baking cakes and cookies, and learning (through YouTube videos and online courses that Kurt ordered through Groupon) to prepare various types of cuisine. Some were a hit, others a miss, but it was always an adventure. He had done something similar with his mother and her collection of vintage cookbooks, congregating around the kitchen island in the afternoons to shed the angst of public school and spread the wings of his stifled creativity. He and his mother discussed everything in the kitchen while sifting flour and creaming butter. It was a tradition he had so looked forward to continuing.

Now, he'd rather not be bothered ever going into the kitchen again.

He'll probably just pick a page out of the IKEA catalog and recreate it. That should offend him. It did when Sebastian suggested it the first time Kurt redecorated their penthouse. But Kurt hardly cares. It just doesn't matter as much as it did. He can't remember the last time he stepped into the kitchen and prepared anything more elaborate than toast and coffee, maybe some dry scrambled eggs. Sebastian took over cooking duties after Grace died, which, nine times out of ten, includes ordering out, if for no other reason than he has to leave the house to pick the food up.

He knows that Kurt appreciates the time alone more than he does a home-cooked meal.

Then there's Sebastian's office, which Kurt is decorating for the first time. He's tried to start a shopping cart for it numerous times, but, unlike the windfall of ideas he had for his studio, he can't get into a groove. He remembers a time when thinking about decorating Sebastian's office put a hundred ideas into his head, but now he has only one.

The cheap, vomit worthy, knock-off furnishings of the no-tell hotel room he pictures whenever he thinks of Sebastian sleeping with another man.

How would Sebastian feel if Kurt decorated his office to look like the business suite at the Marriot?

Kurt sighs. Petty revenge thoughts are getting him nowhere. He's not breaking through his creative block anytime soon, so he puts his plans for the other rooms on the back burner and decides to spend time picking out furniture for his studio. With the exception of his sewing machines, he didn't bring anything from his penthouse studio here, so he's starting over fresh. He switches tabs and starts filling his online shopping cart with the basics - a new drafting table, a cabinet, a chair he'll have to custom-upholster, a bolt of drapery fabric he can repurpose to make a bedspread (if he goes through with his plans for a foldout), and a few other miscellaneous odds and ends, nothing worth wasting too much time over.

Sebastian has been considerate enough to let Kurt do his thing undisturbed for the morning. Kurt can hear him stacking cans in the kitchen cabinets, washing dishes, and fixing the sticky pantry door. Kurt plans on redoing the kitchen, giving the entire room a facelift, and Sebastian knows that. But fixing the door gives Sebastian something to do.

Kurt's reluctance to talk to anyone extends to Sebastian, which Sebastian seems to understand. He's been keeping his distance. But it's nice to hear him puttering around the house. It gives Kurt comfort, the same way listening to his father snore in the middle of the night helped Kurt feel less alone after his mother died. He may want to be _left_ alone, but it's nice to know that he's _not_ alone.

Today did not start out as a good day for Kurt.

Kurt woke up later than he'd intended, and when he did, he couldn't remember where he was. He was alone. Sebastian had woken up and crawled out of bed hours earlier. Kurt climbed out of bed confused, and wandered around aimlessly, hands feeling along the walls, looking for something familiar. He heard a noise downstairs and became frightened. He didn't want to venture down to the lower level because he didn't know who could be there. Maybe someone had broken in, or worse - this was somebody else's house, and _Kurt_ was the invader.

He felt his heart race. He panicked, started hyperventilating. He went from room to room, frantically trying to figure out where he was and why he was there. It wasn't until the second time he went into the room that is his studio that he began to remember. He saw his bag on the floor and, beside it, his sketchbook. He remembered sitting in there the day before, making plans for his new studio. He remembered the wood grain of the floor, the dusty glass, the tree outside, the wallpaper, and that ripped corner by the window, which Kurt refuses to acknowledge any more than he has to.

He feels it behind him, like the sun on his back, trying to get him to turn his face to it, but he refuses. Of all the things he needs to deal with, that one doesn't do the palpitations in his chest any favors.

It confuses him.

It angers him.

It saddens him.

But this is his house, his _new_ house. This is where he's going to live from now on.

These episodes aren't uncommon. They crop up whenever Kurt needs to adapt to change. They're unexpected, like mines in fields he discovers he's been running through when a second ago he was picking flowers in the park, or strolling down the street.

His life for the last ten years revolved around his daughter Grace. When she was a baby, he adjusted his work schedule to match her sleep schedule. They had the money to afford the best nurses in New York, but Kurt didn't want that. He didn't want his daughter raised by a governess. He was as hands-on a parent as there ever was. As Grace grew, her schedule changed, and Kurt adjusted - to her daycare schedule, her Gymboree schedule, her kindergarten schedule, her ballet schedule, her elementary school schedule. He dropped her off in the mornings, picked her up in the afternoons, then spent the rest of the evening going over her homework until it was time for them to make dinner, which they did together.

That was the great thing about being a designer and freelance editor. Kurt could work from anywhere, and, aside from doing consultations at _Vogue_ , he could work any time.

When Grace became sick, Kurt's schedule was dictated by her doctor's visits, her medication regimen, then her chemo.

Towards the end, there was only one item written in Kurt's schedule - lying beside his daughter in her bed, holding on to her for dear life.

And not just her life.

His, too.

Grace kept Kurt's life regimented, but things flipped drastically when she died. He felt adrift. Detached from the life he knew, he didn't know what to latch on to. It took a while for him to get used to her being gone. His internal clock would wake him up bright and early at six to get Grace ready for the day, only to find himself walking blindly into a vacant bedroom. At the store, he would grab her favorite cereal out of habit and put it in his cart even though it wasn't on the list. He would jolt when he heard a song he thought she'd like, or saw an advertisement for a movie he thought she'd enjoy. He has yet to stop the automatic deposits from his bank account into hers, her weekly allowance piling up on top of birthday money and Christmas money, all of it earmarked for college (her decision, not his), but now waiting to be donated to the children's hospital that took such incredible care of her. He doesn't have the heart to empty it. She was so proud of it. He doesn't know what it will do to him to see the balance at zero.

But the worst moment of them all, the absolute worst, was when he tried to go back to work right after they lost her, and he found himself grabbing his coat at 2:15 to pick her up from school.

There are many moments after Grace's death, during Kurt's own struggle for acceptance, that blur together, but this one he remembers so vividly, it brings a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes. He was in the middle of a brainstorming session with his team. His boss Isabelle was there. She had dropped by with a box of cronuts and a grande nonfat mocha. Kurt hadn't been eating. Everyone could tell. But Kurt overlooked the signs – the sharper than normal angle to his cheekbones and chin, his collarbone that showed through his skin just a little too much, his hands that never seemed to stop shaking. He had originally waved the food away when she offered, but an hour later, he was on his third one.

The tension of his presence in the office so soon after his daughter's death slowly dissipated, making way for the familiar, though attenuated, back and forth banter he had so missed. Without knowing it, he was paving the way for a potential comeback. He wouldn't have a line up for a while, and he would need to keep an eye on fashion trends as they came and went in his absence, but this, _this_ just felt so natural, so normal, it almost seemed like it was. He got caught up in the rhythm of this impromptu jam session. Somewhere in the middle of outlining a rough schedule, he looked down at the time on his phone. Mid-sentence, he got up from his chair and walked over to get his coat off the hook by the door.

"Alright," he said with a chuckle over Chase's last clap back at a jab his boyfriend Ian had made, "thanks for everything, you guys, but I've gotta run. We'll talk about this more when I come in tomorrow."

The room went silent, but Kurt didn't seem to notice.

"Where are you going, Kurt?" Isabelle asked, getting up from her seat on the corner of his desk and approaching, knowing that he would need her in a second, the way she always knew. Kurt has referred to Isabelle as his "fairy Godmother" ever since he first walked in to _Vogue_ , fresh out of high school and trying to find a foothold in the hectic Gulf Stream that is New York City. She became his pillar of support, a sympathetic ear and a clear head whenever he needed one. She had thrown his bachelor party. Hers was the apartment he stayed in the night before his wedding. She'd hosted Grace's baby shower, and also Grace's wake.

She didn't have children of her own, but she loved Grace as much as anyone.

And hers was the shoulder he cried on all night when he found out Sebastian had cheated.

Kurt looked at her confused, wondering why it was that, suddenly, everyone around him seemed to be holding their breath. "I just … have to go pick up Grace. From school. I'm going … I'm going to be late."

Isabelle shook her head and put a hand on his. "Sweetie …"

It took Kurt a second. Even after one person gasped and another person sniffled, with Isabelle's sorrowful eyes staring at him, begging him to remember so she didn't have to say it, he didn't understand.

But when he did, it hit him like an electric shock all over his body, rendering his muscles useless, and he crumbled to the floor.

Isabelle held him in her arms in that one spot until Sebastian arrived, and when he did, Kurt didn't want to leave. He didn't want to go with Sebastian to their empty penthouse and face the truth about his empty life. He wanted to stay at _Vogue_ and stay with Isabelle and live in that moment where everything was alright again, for one shimmering second, even if it wasn't real.

But he had to go. He had to leave with Sebastian who had hurt him; back to his life, even if it killed him; because even though he felt like his life was over, everything else continued on. People lived and people died. The sun still set in the evening, but in the morning, it would rise again.

He just didn't want to be a part of it anymore.

Not without his Grace.

He was cried out completely by the time Sebastian got him home. Sebastian undressed him, helped him with his cleaning and moisturizing ritual, and then put him to bed. It was Friday evening when Kurt shut his eyes and went to sleep. He lived that whole horrible moment at his office over again a hundred times before he opened his eyes, and when he did, it was Sunday morning.

Like yesterday, but to a greater extent, when these attacks happen, locked in his own brain, sifting through the pieces to find one big enough and sturdy enough to hold on to, Kurt loses time.

In a blink, hours go by, sometimes a day. He'll climb in the shower in the morning, turn the water on hot, and by the time he realizes it's ice cold, it's close to noon. He has sat at the dining room table for breakfast, staring at a bowl of oatmeal, and when he found the will to pick up the spoon, the oatmeal was old and hard, and it was dinner time. He's gone to bed on Monday and stared at the black behind his eyelids till Wednesday.

As far as Kurt knows, it's only around lunch time, but he glances at the clock in the corner of his screen to be sure.

12:45.

He breathes a sigh of relief. He double checks the date to make sure he has a reason to be, and sighs again.

Kurt switches back to the IKEA tab he'd been laboring long but not hard on earlier. He looks at the shopping cart he's been steadily filling, scrolls through his selections of personality bereft, assembly line furniture, and groans. This isn't him. Where this house, this blank slate, should be an endless fount of motivation, he feels numb. Maybe he shouldn't rush into this. He should give this house and the neighborhood time to grow on him before he sentences it to the mundane.

He needs a break. (Kurt Hummel need a break from shopping? Who knew?) He flips to a new page in his sketchbook. Just for shits and giggles, he tries drawing a sketch for his husband's office. He starts with the easy part – Sebastian's desk. Sebastian didn't leave that in the penthouse, so Kurt will make that the linchpin and design around it. It flows surprisingly easily from there once he gets started, with a pencil in his hand writing on paper instead of working on an impersonal screen – an ornamental rug, a matching leather chair, burgundy velvet curtains, a chainmail style Tiffany desk lamp, 1930s art deco décor with a soupcon of Persian flair. But he doesn't want the room to be too dark. No. Kurt wants nothing in their house to be dark. He adds a Salento chandelier over the largest open portion of the room, and a sweep of color – one wall, opposite a window, a lighter shade than the rest. He doesn't know what Sebastian's office looks like, but there has to be a wall in there that fits that bill.

An enamel and copper vase, a Khatam inlaid photo frame, a few Negar Gari …

Would Sebastian want that? These softer elements countering the strict, straight lines of the art deco pieces, what could be described as "feminine" influences, are Kurt's personal touch. But would Sebastian want just the plain art deco without Kurt's fingerprints all over it? Isn't that what Sebastian meant by Kurt being "heavy handed with the pastels"? Kurt thinks back on a time when he'd decorated his high school bedroom so that he and his stepbrother could share it. He'd worked hard on it, trying to fuse a masculine air with his theatrical influence. What he thought was an eclectic representation of the masculine and the feminine turned into a Moroccan themed disaster.

Actually, the word his stepbrother chose to use at the time was "faggy".

Sebastian has made jabs in their youth about Kurt not wearing "boy clothes", comments that Kurt can recognize now as the teenage boy equivalent of pulling Kurt's pigtails, but at the time, they stung. But Sebastian wouldn't have made those comments if there weren't at least a grain of truth to them, would he? He's never contradicted those statements, so as far as Kurt is concerned, they stand.

Kurt flips his pencil over and starts erasing. He'll pare down the extras – trade the Tiffany lamp for an understated banker's lamp, replace the rug with something more Brooks Brothers than Pier 1.

Maybe he should just opt for another IKEA recreation, but that feels like going back on his word.

He could always _ask_ Sebastian. He swears he's heard his husband pass by a few times, but he didn't think anything of it. Kurt figures he's passing through on his way to get something from the bedroom that he needs downstairs. Kurt doesn't imagine the man is pacing the hallway, even if he is, trying to find a way to tell Kurt that lunch is ready. Little things like this, innocuous things, have become huge divides over the past few months. With anyone else, Sebastian has a history of railroading right over them, hurt feelings be damned.

But Sebastian has learned his lesson. He paid a hefty price to learn it, too.

Contemplating between clearing his throat so that Kurt knows he's there and letting another meal go cold, he sees Kurt's head lift up. It seems like an opening. Whether or not it is, Sebastian takes it.

"Kurt? Lunch is ready."

"Mm-hmm," Kurt mumbles, brushing eraser shavings aside.

"Are you … are you coming downstairs?"

Kurt erases again, then pencils something on a sheet of paper that Sebastian can't see. "Hmmm … mmm?"

It sounds like a question and an answer, but since Kurt doesn't follow it up with anything, it most likely means that Kurt will be skipping lunch today … again. Sebastian knocks idly on the door frame, giving Kurt a second longer to tell him for sure.

"Alright," he says. Disappointed, he turns to leave. "I guess I'll come back up at dinner then."

Kurt doesn't know why the thought returns when he wasn't even thinking about it; why it decided to nag at his brain when he had been able to ignore it for this long, but that's the way his brain works now. His thoughts don't always travel down straight paths. They twist and turn, taking one thing and linking it to something unrelated. Erasing those ideas he'd written down, removing every inch of himself from his picture of Sebastian's office, made him think about how eager he was to be rid of that word _darling_ from above the window, and that ripped corner returns to his mind with a vengeance.

Well, as long as Sebastian is there, he might as well ask.

"Sebastian?"

"Yes?" Sebastian pauses in the doorway, not daring to move.

"When was the last time you were here?" Kurt raised an eyebrow at the idea when it originally came to him. When would Sebastian have come to this house that Kurt didn't know? They traveled Upstate once a year, but they always did it together as a family. And while they were here, Sebastian rarely ventured out alone. Sebastian isn't the kind of person who would buy a house sight unseen.

Unless he had found it during one of his outings with Grace. Which would mean that Grace had seen the inside.

Which meant that Grace would have seen this room and thought it would be hers, thought that they would someday live here, and Sebastian hid that word _darling_ by the window for _her,_ and not Kurt.

The thought is so painful, it makes Kurt want to tear his nails out with his teeth so he'll stop thinking about it.

Sebastian keeps his eyes locked to Kurt's profile so he won't miss it the moment Kurt decides to look at him instead of the floor, the wall, or the ceiling.

"I found this house online. It wasn't even on the market when I stumbled on it. To be honest, I'd only driven by it once. I hadn't been inside until we moved in."

"But you've _seen_ the inside," Kurt asks. "Otherwise, how would you know about this room?"

"I took a virtual tour," Sebastian admits sheepishly, "but it was very thorough. I've seen the blueprints, gone over the permits and the zoning. I had Tristan from the office look over the place when he came up to visit his folks. He facetimed with me while he was here." Sebastian furrows his brow. "Why? Is something wrong?"

So Grace _hadn't_ seen it. Hearing that lets Kurt's heart beat regular again. Kurt's eyes find the torn section of wallpaper, but they don't stay there. He doesn't want to clue Sebastian in about it if Sebastian doesn't already know. He wants to uncover this mystery on his own. If Sebastian gets to keep secrets, _big ones_ at that, then Kurt wants this one for himself.

"No, no. Nothing's wrong. I was just curious, you know. Wanted to understand your _process_. Why this house … why this neighborhood … that sort of thing."

Kurt's sentence comes out choppy. It's odd how awkward talking has become for them. Sebastian used to think that the two things they had mastered were talking and fucking. They did both with such ease. There were never any boundaries between them, emotionally or physically. Even when they were cutting each other down, which they did in the beginning, it was never a difficult thing to talk to one another.

Not like now, when Sebastian feels like he's walking on eggshells and Kurt doesn't want to hear half of what he has to say.

"If you come down for lunch, we can talk about my process. If you're curious, that is." Sebastian watches Kurt expectantly, waiting for an answer.

And while Sebastian does, Kurt looks at his sketch – Sebastian's office, exactly the same way Sebastian always has it decorated. This is Sebastian, Kurt thinks, without him and Grace - bland and emotionless, with no light, little color, and no joy. Nothing exciting, nothing nuanced … nothing that indicates that he and Sebastian are together, not even those pictures he's so proud of.

Kurt still hasn't decided whether that's a bleak picture or not.

It might be bleak for Sebastian, but is it bleak for Kurt?

"Sure. I'll be down in a sec," Kurt decides, because he does and doesn't have an answer to that one. It changes as the day changes, and the days change too quickly.

"Alright. I'll be waiting." He hears Sebastian walk away, or he thinks he does. He checks the time on his clock. It's closing in on 2.

Kurt glances up at the window, the dangling wallpaper bouncing with the breeze coming from a draft near the ceiling. It would be so easy to just tear it down – grab an edge and rip, be done with it once and for all. It might even feel cathartic, exposing whatever is underneath it. But lunch is ready. He's already left Sebastian waiting long enough.

He leaves the mystery for another day.


	4. Send Your Most Handsome Delivery Man

**When Sebastian Smythe sends his husband flowers, it garners an array of reactions, both positive and petty. But the purpose behind the flowers, only a few people know. And the purpose behind the delivery man? To take away the sting.**

 **This is actually not the next chapter, but a future fic one-shot. I stuck it here because I was afraid it would get lost otherwise.**

"So, are these all the dresses we have to choose from for this year's Prom spread?" Kurt asks on a beleaguered sigh.

"Why? What's wrong with them?" Isabelle scans through the proofs on her tablet, hoping to stumble on _one_ that will catch Kurt's fancy. A cornucopia of gowns flies by with every swipe of her fingertips, the bulk of them shimmery pastels and whites this year, with a few pale golds and silvers tossed in, all quite lovely, in her opinion.

"They're just so … so _boring_." Kurt pauses Isabelle's scrolling with a hand on her wrist, stopping on the newest designs from Jessica McClintock. "I mean, really? Spaghetti strap sheaths with a drop back and absolutely no shaping. Aren't a lot of these throwbacks from the late 80s, early 90s?"

"Retro's in," Isabelle argues, but not vehemently. She knows that Kurt's not altogether _in the moment_. His mind's somewhere else. He's not there to work; he's there to be removed from other things. So they'll continue for the next hour, agree to disagree, then tomorrow, when things blow over, Kurt will come in with a clearer head and make the decisions that need to be made.

But, for now, he needs the distraction, and she's more than willing to give it.

"Retro's _always_ in," Kurt groans, letting her keep scrolling. "It's never not in. Retro has been the in thing for the past decade. Doesn't anyone do anything original anymore?"

"Well, you know what they say about infinite monkeys and typewriters."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't compare any of these dresses to the works of Shakespeare. And, for the record, _I_ made the outfit that I wore to Prom, and I was crowned queen."

"Wasn't that more than a decade ago?"

Isabelle chuckles lightly. Kurt shoots her a venomous look.

"Bite your tongue, young lady."

"If you don't like these, there's always …" The conference room phone cuts in, interrupting their conversation with a chirp. Kurt doesn't acknowledge it. Isabelle presses the speaker button.

"Isabelle Wright," she says.

"There's a delivery down in reception for Mr. Hummel."

"What is it?" Isabelle asks for him.

"It's a _gorgeous_ bouquet of flowers delivered by a handsome gentleman in a suit."

In the background they can hear the giggling of other ladies in reception, fawning over the flowers, _and_ the delivery man.

Isabelle looks at Kurt, still bent over the photographs, examining but not really examining them. He doesn't crack a smile at the ridiculous goings on in reception, doesn't comment about the gossip that must already be brewing. His eyes dart over to his cell phone on the desk, his lock screen displaying the date and the time. He nods, but does nothing else.

"Send him up," Isabelle says.

The man walking the hallways of _Vogue_ is pretty much every woman's – and many men's – wet dream: tall, with broad shoulders, a sculpted face, and deep set green eyes surrounded by flecks of gold. He's dressed in a crisp, grey, Armani suit; impeccably groomed, everything from his hair style to his clean shaven jaw on point. Smelling like expensive cologne and wearing a gold Rolex, he struts through the building with the confidence of a Fortune 500 CEO. In his hands he carries a boxed bouquet of roses so aromatic, they leave a scent trail through the office as he goes. Each rose is nearly the exact same size and shape, at the same stage of bloom, giving the bouquet an almost artificially uniform appearance.

Reactions to this man and the gift he bears vary, especially when people find out where the flowers are headed.

The young, fresh faced models, some still in their teens, _ahhh_! enviously when they see the striking man with the overflowing bouquet walk past the studio rooms. The smarter photographers take advantage of the moment, snapping away shot after shot of giddy giggles and honest smiles.

Meanwhile, some of the new hires and interns roll their eyes.

"Flowers?" they mutter, out of earshot. "Please. Isn't that a little dated/unoriginal/dull? Especially for a man like Sebastian Smythe, who can afford to buy his husband a new Lamborghini every day till he dies?"

Then there are the in-betweeners, the ones who know Kurt and Sebastian's story _vaguely_ , having gleaned their information from the unreliable gossip slung by outgoing temps and part timers. They _ooo!_ behind their hands, wondering what Sebastian did wrong _this time_ to warrant such an extravagant bouquet.

And then there are the few select people who _know_.

They know why the handsome man.

They know why the flowers.

They know what day today is.

They know that Kurt is at work because he does better around company, while Sebastian manages better alone. They'll spend a portion of the day apart, then come together, traveling by taxi to meet up first in front of their favorite coffee shop, then continue the last stretch of their journey – a block and a half east – on foot, hand in hand, to deliver the flowers the rest of their way.

But for now, because Sebastian can't be there himself, not yet, he orders two dozen roses – half pale pink, half diamond white. He has them sent to _Vogue_ , to Kurt Hummel, in lieu of their daughter Grace.

Neither man can walk into a florist's shop and purchase these flowers. Neither of them has the strength required. And sending them ahead just seems too impersonal. So they split the task. Sebastian places the order. He has it saved on his phone. It's a one-click process at a place that honors some pretty upscale special requests. And Kurt accepts them, holds on to them, pretends that they're for him until he can deliver them with his husband to the final resting place of their daughter.

But to take away a bit of the sting, to help Kurt with the fantasy, Sebastian tells them to send their most handsome delivery man.


	5. Chapter 4

**Inspired by the drabble prompt 'dessert'.**

That evening, Kurt sets his alarm. He needs to take control of his life. No more depending on his circadian rhythm to wake him up on time. From now on, he sets his own rhythm and follows it. Kurt has always followed the beat of his own drum. He needs to go back to that.

For his sanity if for nothing else.

So his alarm goes off at seven. He gets out of bed, gathers his skin care products and his clothes for the day, and heads to the bathroom. Before he turns on the shower water, he sets another timer. He'll give himself an hour. Half-an-hour seems like rushing, but if he stays in there for longer, he might as well bring a sandwich and set up shop because he'll be there all day.

Sebastian used to joke about Kurt and his "two hour showers", claiming that Kurt's showers alone deprived most of the city of hot water. He blamed three separate water shortages on Kurt (even though none of those droughts affected their area). So on the mornings that Sebastian went to work late, he'd join Kurt in the shower. As soon as Kurt broke out his body wash and started soaping up his skin, Sebastian would relieve him of that responsibility, and Kurt's "two hour" solo shower would turn into a three hour orgasm.

As much as Kurt misses those, he doesn't want to remember them. He's not ready for those to make a comeback.

An hour in the shower is fine.

While he lathers up, he starts making a list of things to do to keep his mind from wandering. First, he needs to finalize those orders sitting in his shopping cart since yesterday. After lunch, Kurt didn't go back to working on the house. Instead, Sebastian lured Kurt into another movie marathon. Movies are the way that Sebastian deals with his depression. As a child, he and his father loved going to the movies together. The minute the newest blockbuster hit the theaters, they were the first two in line. But adult Sebastian can't stand going to the movies. He doesn't like anything about it, from the overpriced tickets to the sticky floors, and the popcorn, which Sebastian accuses of being stale even if it's freshly popped before his eyes. He says it's because he has no desire to waste his time in a stuffy, poorly ventilated theater, watching a movie that will be on Netflix in a few months anyway, especially when there's book reading and fucking to do.

Kurt thinks that might have something to do with the falling out Sebastian and his father had after Sebastian and Kurt got married, but Kurt has yet to ask.

If he did, Sebastian probably wouldn't talk about it.

Sebastian hasn't cracked a book since Grace got sick. Reading gives him too much time inside his own head with his intrusive thoughts. And fucking … well, that isn't something they did anymore.

So movies it is. Sebastian can get lost in movies. He can shut off his brain and just follow along with the words and the action, seeing everything, hearing everything, having it all handed to him without exerting any effort, and absorbing nothing. Kurt will ask him, on occasion, about the show that he's been watching so intently, but except for the prior five minutes, Sebastian usually can't tell him what the plot is. Even without Kurt by his side, he usually falls asleep with the television on.

The television is on in their room right now, cycling from one episode of _Lucifer_ to another on a continuous loop.

Kurt's list making grinds to a halt when thoughts of his husband lying in their bed, curled on his side with the television on, interrupts his contemplating over whether he wants to refinish _all_ of the floors, or does he want carpet on some. Sebastian. His marriage. That's something Kurt's going to have to work on, too. But is that the kind of thing that you jot onto a list filled with stuff like order paint, hire a contractor, and call _Terminix_ to make sure there are no termites in the exterior wood before he starts tearing out drywall? Kurt does have a habit of living his life by lists. If it's not on a list, it often times gets forgotten.

So, yes, working on his marriage makes its way onto his "to do" list.

He rinses off and gets out of the shower before his timer goes off. After he dries, moisturizes, and dresses, he grabs his sketchbook and ventures downstairs. In the few days they've been there, Kurt hasn't spent more than five hours total in the downstairs of the house. He'd better get a move on if they want to enter the New Year with more than a handful of chairs, an old flea market coffee table, and a futon.

Or maybe he should have Sebastian send for the rest of their furniture from the penthouse.

Does Kurt really see himself going back?

Rustling around in the kitchen, getting a pot of coffee started, covers the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Kurt wanders from room to room as his coffee heats, but the footsteps join up with him in the room that will become Sebastian's office.

"I didn't think I'd find you down here."

Kurt doesn't look up when his husband stops in the doorway, but Sebastian sounds tired. _If the man's still tired, why doesn't he stay in bed?_ Kurt wonders. _It's not like he really needs to be anywhere._

Of course, he could be doing like Kurt, setting a schedule and sticking to it, all in an effort to stay sane.

Kurt can respect that.

"Yeah, well, there's a ton of work to do in this house of yours," Kurt says, walking the room. "I can't rest on my laurels."

Sebastian frowns at Kurt's distinction. Sebastian had seen this as _their_ new house, _their_ new start, but apparently Kurt doesn't see it that way. "Well, it's nice seeing you out of _your_ studio," Sebastian says with slight, petty emphasis in an attempt to get Kurt to correct himself.

He doesn't.

Kurt's first thought is to come back with, _'Don't get used to it,'_ but he can't. He has to remember that he's supposed to be trying. He promised he'd try.

"Thanks," Kurt says instead. A long silence stretches between them, but those have ceased to become awkward. It's a consequence of them learning how to communicate with one another again. When they first met in their teens, they had such similar temperaments, which made talking (and insulting) one another simpler. But nowadays Kurt is more prone to flying off the handle, and in response, Sebastian has become submissive, more likely to roll over and expose his belly than instigate a fight.

Kurt hates that. It might be easier for him to decide what he wants to do – stay or go – if Sebastian hadn't begun to change. But Sebastian's adjusting to Kurt, so Kurt only has himself to blame.

Then again, _cheater_ , so …

"Was there something you wanted to ask me?" Kurt says while focusing on his drawing, deciding in what ways the layout he created matches the layout of the actual room.

"Uh, yeah." Sebastian steps in, but not closer to Kurt. He's simply occupying a similar vicinity. "I wanted to know … do you need me here this afternoon? To keep you company or anything? Because I thought I'd run some errands."

Kurt doesn't really give his husband's question too much thought. He doesn't know what he'd need Sebastian for if he stuck around. "No. I'll be fine. You go ahead."

"Okay. Did you need anything from outside?"

Another non-thought. "Nah. I'm all good here."

"Do you … want to know where I'm going?"

Kurt stops pacing. Does he _need_ to know? He has to learn to trust his husband again. If there's no trust in their relationship, then this relationship is never going to work. And just this morning, Kurt promised to make a greater effort. Here's Kurt's chance to prove that he wants to. "That's okay," he says, waving Sebastian away. "You have fun."

"Yeah. Right. Loads," Sebastian says with a nervous laugh and an audible eye-roll, neither of which Kurt seems to catch. "Oh, I peeked into your studio to see how things are coming along, and you still have the wallpaper up. I thought for sure that was the first thing you'd tear down."

 _It would be if you weren't hiding crap under it_ , Kurt thinks. He's been wavering on his belief that Sebastian doesn't know that word is there. He may not have put it there himself, but he could have gotten someone else to do it. He sent a colleague here - what was his name? - _Tristan_. He'd sent Tristan to the house to look it over. Facetimed with him, too. Kurt wouldn't put it past Sebastian to tell the man to write it if he thought it would win Kurt back.

"I am. But I want to find a decent floor guy before I get started on the walls. That floor is a disaster. I'd like to do them both at roughly the same time. Minimize clean up."

That wasn't true at all. It was hard for Kurt to take the plunge. He wants the room to be perfect, but considering his design, he's apprehensive to see what it will look like when it's done.

"Is that the sketch of my office?" Sebastian has gotten closer, step by step while Kurt paced, without Kurt noticing.

"Maybe," Kurt mumbles, changing direction.

"Can I see it?"

Kurt curls his sketchbook towards his chest. He had erased everything he had added to make it unique, to give it a bit of _Kurt Hummel_ flair. But after having the night to think it over, he feels he copped out. But if Sebastian looks at this bland drawing and _loves_ it, Kurt will realize that writing himself out of the picture might be what Sebastian wants. "Not yet. It's not ready."

"Well, I can't wait to see it when it's done."

Kurt raises an eyebrow, then his eyes. "Wh-what if you don't like it?"

Sebastian cocks his head, smiling at the worry on Kurt's face. It's nice to know that his husband still cares what he thinks. "That's not too reassuring, going into this project assuming I won't like it."

"But what if you don't?"

Sebastian doesn't want to answer that. It sounds too much like a test, and Sebastian's too afraid of failing any more of those. "You know, I'm not even considering that a possibility because I _know_ I'll love it."

It annoys Kurt that Sebastian didn't answer the question, but he doesn't let it show on his face. But the blank, disaffected face he makes instead, his default face for anything that falls between sadness and anger, Sebastian can't stand.

"Okay, well, I'm gonna go do my thing," Sebastian says. "I'll see you in a few hours."

Kurt nods, returning his attention to his sketch. "Take your time."

* * *

Kurt remembers talking to Sebastian that morning before Sebastian left, but he doesn't _realize_ Sebastian's gone until he's been gone for hours. Loneliness seeps into his skin all the way to his bones. Kurt feels his chest tighten, and hears a ringing in his ears in place of conversation. Kurt doesn't have a problem being alone, he just doesn't do it well. This house is not the best place to be alone, he's begun to realize. It's steeped in spirits. Kurt can hear them in the wood when the house creaks, talking to one another in the eaves when the wind blows. Kurt doesn't mind ghosts – he has plenty of his own - as long as they leave him alone. But these ghosts are beginning to discover that he's there, and they're trying to get his ghosts to come out and play.

He's thankful he's not back home, alone in the penthouse. After Grace died, their home filled with a brand of silence that Kurt never got used to. It was cruel, held memories of laughter and jokes and singing that would never again be heard within those walls. Kurt tried to bring it back by watching old home videos, but he couldn't stand it for too long. It was too painful.

With the specters of this new house closing in around him by way of lengthening shadows across the floors, he didn't enjoy being stuck in this silence either. Would he ever be able to handle being alone again? Why couldn't he exist by himself in his own flesh for longer than a few hours? He tries putting on music, runs upstairs to find something on his iPod that he can blast throughout the whole house, noise ordinances be damned, but nothing he finds helps. Every song he knows, every playlist he has, has a connection in one way or another to someone he's lost – his mother, his stepbrother, his father, Grace … and Sebastian. Kurt's about to switch to radio and settle on a Spanish station when he hears the front door open and shut.

"Kur-rt. I brought you desser-rt," Sebastian calls, crossing through the empty living room to the kitchen and setting a bakery box on the table. "Something I know you've been missing."

The silence broken, the ghosts go back into hiding, and Kurt's relieved to have Sebastian home.

That's why he needed him, Kurt thinks with a mental scoff. To keep the ghosts away. _Shit_. That makes Sebastian damn near invaluable.

"Really?" Kurt asks. He ventures down the steps, intrigued. He sees Sebastian open the lid and his eyes light up. "Cheesecake?" he gasps. "You bought me a cheesecake?"

"Yup," Sebastian says, going into the cabinet for plates.

"Where the heck did you find cheesecake out here in the boonies?"

"Kurt, we haven't left civilization, you know. They have a mall out here. It even has a Nordies."

"Well, thank heavens for small favors." Kurt doesn't wait for a slice, digging out a piece with his fingers and popping it into his mouth. He doesn't chew. He doesn't have to. The cream cheese goodness melts on his tongue. He closes his eyes and sighs. Yes siree. _That's_ the good stuff. When Sebastian doesn't give up the name of the bakery, Kurt takes a peek at the lid. If there's a place anywhere near them that sells cheesecake this heavenly, Kurt's going to send Sebastian there every day. But when Kurt flips the lid down and sees teal writing against white paperboard, he doesn't have to read it. He's seen this box a hundred times before. "You got this … from Renaldi's? You went … you went into the city?"

Sebastian puts the plates down on the table gently so they don't clatter. He doesn't go back for the forks. "Yeah. Yeah, I did." Sebastian had picked the cheesecake up on a whim. He didn't have an ulterior motive other than he wanted Kurt to have something nice to bring him out of his funk. It hadn't hit Sebastian until close to home what he had done. He contemplated stopping off somewhere and getting a plain box to replace the custom one, or pitching the cheesecake altogether, but he didn't want to keep any more secrets from Kurt.

He was in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

"You … you didn't tell me you were going into the city."

"I asked you if you wanted to know where I was going, and you said no," Sebastian points out.

Sebastian's answer isn't an answer. It's a _loophole_. A fucking loophole!

Kurt wants to pick up a chair and throw it.

"I had some quick, last minute business to attend to," Sebastian explains, the last resort of a drowning man who's sunk his own ship. He knows he fucked up. Now he has to keep his head above water long enough to swim to shore. "You know, tie up some loose ends."

"A-ha." Kurt crosses his arms. "Did you go to wrap up loose ends, or did you go to see _him_?"

Sebastian has to physically stop himself from retaliating, keep the dozen bitter comments that rush to his tongue from firing. Kurt may have built up walls, but Sebastian doesn't. He forgoes walls entirely in favor of weapons – insults, sarcastic remarks, low blows. They may do nothing to break down Kurt's walls, but that was never their purpose. They're there to inflict pain. But Sebastian doesn't want to do that. He can't do that. "Actually, I went to see _her_."

Kurt's face goes from red with anger to pale and sick. He suddenly feels sweaty, like he might throw up. "You … you went to see Grace … without me?"

"I didn't think you'd want to go with me."

"But you didn't even _ask_ me!"

"I didn't want you to get upset."

"Yeah, well, you're doing an amazing job there!"

"I'm trying to be the good guy, Kurt!" Sebastian says, begging Kurt to see reason, to see his side just once. "I'm doing _everything_ you want! I'm giving you your space!"

"This is different and you know it!" Kurt cries. "We _swore_ we'd never go without each other! You promised!"

"I'm sorry, Kurt. I am. But I … I needed a moment with her alone."

"Are you sure it's _her_ you needed a moment alone with? Are you sure you're not using her as an elaborate excuse?"

Sebastian stares at Kurt as if he punched him in the face, rammed him in the stomach, _and_ kicked him in the balls. "Kurt, that's not fair."

"Right." Kurt hugs himself tight, feeling vitriol rise up inside him and embracing the temporary rush. " _I'm_ the one who's not being fair. _You're_ breaking promises left and right and _I'm_ not being fair!?"

"Kurt, I'm trying to do what you want, I swear. I'm trying to _fix_ things!"

"You don't _fix_ things by keeping secrets from me!"

"I don't know how to talk to you anymore, Kurt! You're so wrapped up in your own depression, in your anger towards me that you seem to forget …" Sebastian pinches his lips shut, which makes Kurt curious as hell. He's never seen his husband slam to a stop in the middle of an argument like that before.

"Forget what?" Kurt says. "Go ahead. Come out and say it."

Sebastian's jaw doesn't loosen when he talks. "That you're not the only one here who lost a daughter. _I_ lost one, too. The only difference is that now I'm losing a husband as well."

"Losing?" Kurt laughs at the gall of that statement. "You didn't _lose_ me. It's not like I wandered off alone, or you forgot where you put me. You _tossed_ me aside! You stepped out on me! I needed you! I needed you to need _me_ , I needed us to grieve together, and you went to someone else! You don't get to blame _me_ for that!"

Sebastian takes a breath to calm down. "I know, Kurt," he says, letting the breath go. "I know. I'm ..."

"You're what? You're _sorry_? Saying you're sorry without changing things doesn't fix them! Sorry without action is just a word! And it's one I'm getting tired as hell of hearing." Kurt storms away from the table, blowing through the living room to the staircase with Sebastian following behind.

"Kurt! Where are you going?"

"I'm going to work on my studio," Kurt declares, racing up the stairs.

"But … but what about the cheesecake?" Sebastian asks, grasping at straws to make Kurt rethink himself and stay.

" _You_ eat it. I'm not hungry." Kurt gets to the top landing and stops. There's something he's about to say, buzzing at the tip of his tongue, but he has to ask himself - is he going to say it just to hurt Sebastian? Or is this what he truly believes? Either way, it makes an entrance before Kurt has the chance to stop it. "You know what? You might want to hire a decorator to do your office."

"What?" Sebastian gasps like Kurt tore out his heart. "But … b-but _why_?"

"Because I think you were right the first time," Kurt says, knowing that this is the truth – a heartbreaking truth. "We need our own spaces." Kurt sees his husband's face drop, every inch of hope on it crumbling away, and even though Kurt's mad at him, he can't leave him that way. "At least … we do for now."

Kurt marches down the hallway and into his studio, but he doesn't close the door behind him. He hears Sebastian in the living room. Or, more to the point, Kurt _doesn't_ hear him, not for a while. Sebastian remains at the bottom step, staring upward in disbelief, wondering what the hell he's supposed to do now. But it's not long after that Kurt hears stomping across the bottom level, followed by the loud scrape and angry splat of what has to be a cheesecake flying off the kitchen table and hitting the floor.

* * *

Kurt glares at the walls of his studio, at the floors, and his sketchbook - the top page showing the plans he's made, plans he's putting off - and decides enough is enough. No more waiting. He needs to jump in with both feet. That's what Sebastian does. He doesn't consider consequences. He just does what he wants. And who tells him no? No one. No one _ever_ tells him no. No one tells him to wait, or he can't, or he shouldn't. No one except Kurt. But Kurt's opinion doesn't matter. When Kurt says no, Sebastian always finds a way around.

Loopholes.

"You should have known better than to marry a lawyer, babe," he'd say, and then he'd laugh like it's so funny. Like it's such a big fucking joke. A big fucking joke with Kurt as the big fucking punchline.

They had made a pact, and to Kurt, that pact was sacred. But Sebastian doesn't seem to know the meaning of that word. Their vows were sacred, too, but he found a loophole around those. Apparently grief gives a person carte blanche. Kurt wishes he'd known that was how it worked. Maybe he could have found solace between another man's legs and chalked it up to grief, too.

But Kurt wouldn't have even if he could have. That's not the man he is.

So what does he have? What vices does he get to fall back on? Nothing. He's never been a vice kind of guy. In all his life, he's gotten drunk about four times, gotten one piercing (that he took out two days later), and one lame tattoo. And even though he's standing in the center of a bridge between repairing his marriage and leaving his husband, he can't bring himself to indulge in one revenge fuck that, by all rights, he's entitled to.

Well, he's had it! No more emotional manipulation, no more secrets! Kurt's not a teenager anymore, sitting on a block of ice, watching Sebastian fuck everything on two legs, waiting in the wings because Sebastian says he's unsure of his feelings even though he claims he fell in love with Kurt the moment he laid eyes on him.

No more living in fear that one day Kurt won't be good enough, handsome enough, exciting enough, daring enough (even though those thoughts were Kurt's and Kurt's alone – he recognizes that) and Sebastian will leave him for someone else.

Kurt's living that reality now, even if it was just the one night. In Kurt's eyes, that should imbue him with a certain amount of freedom, but he feels locked down even tighter. Sebastian cheated on him and yet the burden seems to be on Kurt to make things better. Sebastian says he's trying to fix things, but Kurt's the one who's expected to give him the time to do that.

Sebastian takes, takes, takes, and Kurt gives in.

But no more. No more slip-ups in the name of grief. No more white lies shadowing half-truths. No more, no more, _no more!_

It's about time that Kurt starts rebuilding, and in order to do that, he needs to tear something apart other than himself.

And Kurt knows exactly where he wants to start.

His eyes zero in on the torn corner of wallpaper. He barrels up to it, grabs the edge, and tugs. He meets resistance, the glue adhering the paper to the wall much stronger than Kurt anticipated. It's difficult to hold on to with just his fingers, and it doesn't want to come down without a fight.

"So you're not going to go easy, are you? Well, _fuck you_ , then!" He steps back and yanks hard. With a final tug that nearly sprains his wrist, the piece vised between Kurt's fingers tears free. The corner scores along the seam of the window frame with a dull noise, like linen rending instead of paper, and then snaps free, sending Kurt stumbling back about five steps. Breathing heavy, Kurt looks at the piece of wallpaper in his hand, the word _darling_ printed in reverse on the opposite side, which should tell his rational brain that Sebastian, or Tristan, couldn't have written it. It had to be underneath the wallpaper when it went up on the wall. Judging by the texture of the paper, the fact that there's more than one layer of paper fused together, and the pebbly remains of the glue underneath, that couldn't have been recently. Kurt's done enough renovations to know that, but he doesn't care. Whatever this is, he's determined to blame Sebastian for it, because the fault lies with him. Everything that's gone wrong in their lives thus far is his fault … _his_ fault! And now Kurt has to pay the price. Kurt crumples the piece of wallpaper in his hands, digging his nails into it until a sharp edge of folded paper digs into his palm. He finally looks at the wall, ready to read whatever else Sebastian had the gall to hide underneath this paper because logic and reason don't live here anymore. Only hate.

And Kurt's ready to hate Sebastian more.

But when Kurt sees the writing revealed by the torn paper, his mouth drops open.

What's underneath the wallpaper isn't just words. It's a love letter, like Kurt suspected.

Except, it's not a letter to Kurt.

And it wasn't written by Sebastian.

 _To my darling, my beloved, the love of my life,_

 _I pray every day that things were different between us, that I could be where you are, that I can do more than just send you letters. I want to see your smiling face, touch your hand. I want to know in no uncertain terms that you love me. You tell me you do, but I miss hearing your voice. With every minute that passes, I lose hope that we'll finally be together. Please tell me you're still willing to wait for me? I can't lose you. Not now. Not ever._

 _Forever yours, I shall remain –_

 _Blaine_

Kurt reads the letter to himself, then once again out loud. He looks at the tear in the wallpaper and sees more words, more letters hidden underneath. They're not written on the wall. They're paper letters glued to the wall that were covered up by the wallpaper … several layers of wallpaper, since underneath this top cover is a red rose paisley, followed by a plain seafoam green, and a cream with gold filigree; at least seven individual layers that Kurt can see, as if someone went to great lengths to cover up these letters … and forget about them.

His anger from earlier momentarily forgotten, Kurt reaches up and traces over the name with his fingertips.

"Blaine," he whispers, narrowing his eyelids. "Who are you, Blaine?"


End file.
